Filtering by Tag: fear mongering

Let's change course a little and look at how we teach. Maybe it's the musician in me and the fact that I've had private lessons on my instrument (or taught them) since I was 6, but I see two main ways of teaching (certainly there are many approaches, these are just my 2).

1) Do this task like this, because I say so, because it's good for you, because you're supposed to, because it will benefit x,y,z, etc. The same logic can be applied to Don't do that, because I say so, because you'll hurt yourself, or in the case of the 1980's movie, The Christmas Story, "you'll poke your eye out."

2) Do this task, and then you tell me what you notice. In music, you might ask a student what they hear, how they feel, what the challenges are, etc. In movement, you might ask about the quality of breath, whether things feel easy or difficult, where there are restrictions, what sensations are present. You might also just ask students to move in different ways and see how they feel, without needing their verbal responses, and just ask them to be in dialogue with themselves.

Now at any given point in a lesson or a class, you might need to draw from one of these approaches. "Step your right foot back" is a command from the first mode that might be necessary to come into a high lunge in yoga class. "Feel what happens in the left side of your body as you step the foot back" is a directive from the second mode.

In a music lesson, you might ask a student to play a piece or scale, and then ask them to focus on something either physically, sonically, and see how it affects the end product, the experience of playing, the expression, etc.

Either way, you need to draw from both approaches to get things done. If we always tell students what to do and how they should feel, they may never have a sense of what feels good in their body, or for musicians, how to develop their own creative and expressive voice. If we always draw from the second approach, we can get lost in the details so much that we may not accomplish something, which sometimes is a good thing, and other times, not so much.

For example, walking meditation is a form of mindfulness practice in many spiritual traditions. Most people practicing it walk extremely slowly (think zombies), which is great, but at a certain point in life, you have to walk (or run) and try to bring the mindfulness work in a different context. If we only practice a piece or excerpt slowly and with great care, we may never be able to play it at the tempo or with the character we wish to.

I digress a little, but I apologize, I'm still drinking coffee.

When we only draw from the first modality of teaching, do this and do it this way (or don't do that), we're not necessarily teaching the person in front of us, but we are asserting our authority as superiors to the students. For example, some people's legs and degrees of turnout are uneven between the left and right sides. The goal of a symmetrical squat (or symmetrical pilates footwork) may not be practical or possible for that person in context. For musicians, some teachers have the approach of "all my students use this sort of setup/instrument/technique/shoulder rest/lack of shoulder rest." The challenge is that a one size fits all approach doesn't account for structural variability, let alone what that student needs on an emotional and psychological level. In both cases, the student may feel inadequate, irregular, and frustrated when the solution presented to them doesn't work, may or may not cause pain, or leaves them unable to execute the task as well as they could.

Fear mongering language in teaching comes from that first approach, and it comes from a place of good intention of wanting to help the student sound better, look better, feel better, prevent injury, or do the task better. It may come as a way of reinforcing the benefits of certain poses or movements, to just assert a foundation, and may be a way to try to get a large group of people to do what you want. It may not necessarily account for the actual student in front of you, and what is or isn't possible for them.

Once again, the dog is a critical piece of the pose here, obviously.

Let's go back to a common yoga cue of "don't bend your knees past your ankles in a lunge or warrior pose- it's not good for your knees." The first time I trained with weights and kettlebells, I realized that there were moments when my knees had to go forward of my ankles, and I thought it was horrible teaching on the part of the personal trainer. Over the following months, I conversely tried squatting and deadlifting many ways and realized that it didn't hurt me to bend my knees fully. It turns out that I move in ways all the time that bend my knees past 90 degrees, and it's fine, the 90 degree bend rule was for achieving a specific shape in yoga, not for all movements, all the time. Knowing this, how might I change that original cue if I was teaching ?

"Bend your knee to a 90 degree angle. The classic form of this pose has this architecture. Now bend it a little less or a little more. Try changing something and see how it feels. If you like the variation, notice that, if you dislike the variation, notice whether it's because it's a deviation from what you've learned, or because it doesn't feel good. Feel what you feel, and know that it is valid."

Holding a dog just makes this that much more regal.

That's just me, and doesn't have to be how you'd handle it. This isn't an excuse to give up on alignment, structure, or the forms of movements and disciplines, but instead permission to enter into a dialogue, a conversation with your students about what you're doing as you do it. It's essentially giving you permission to be a collaborator with your clients or students to come up with a solution, rather than have all the answers. Side note, if you give an alignment cue, make sure to reiterate that it's specific to that student at that moment in time in that movement, not that it needs to be done 24/7!

Part 3 to follow later this week, with more coffee and puppy kisses (since he makes the photos that much better).

Lately, I've been thinking about how we relay content to students, whether it's as a music instructor or movement instructor. I had an interesting experience in a somatic group class this week, which doesn't necessarily reflect the views of all teachers of this discipline, or even the guild or method. Let me give you the context:

This is a super common and useful human movement. My hips are in flexion, but my spine is in neutral-ish, with a hint of extension.

We were working on the hip hinge, which is a fabulous and important human movement, at the baseline of squatting, dead lifting, etc. I love it, I teach it, it's great, and we were looking at it in the context of picking up objects off the floor. Also great. The other people in the class noticed that the hip hinge felt balanced, used the glutes and back body, and felt stronger, which can all be true. The catch is that at some point, the conversation derailed to how moving at all with a flexed spine is bad, and that's where I disagreed strongly. To be clear, this was not only saying that picking things up off the floor with a flexed spine is bad, but that any flexed spine movements are bad. One of the students asked if a forward fold in yoga was injurious, and the teacher said yes, flexing the spine causes damage and low back pain. This was the first thing that made me angry. The teacher also said that it doesn't honor the curves of the spine. This was the second thing that made me angry. What was the group class takeaway from this? That the body should only be moving in neutral all the time to honor the curves of the spine. Is this possible? Not really. Unless you're superhuman, you sleep with a flexed spine, you walk with subtle rotations and side bends and constant movements in the spine and hips, and if you're reading this, you probably play an instrument, drive a car, and move in all sorts of ways both intentionally and accidentally.

In this image, my spine is rounding over to pick up the object. In previous decades, the thought was that spinal flexion to pick up things led to back pain and disc damage. This opinion has since been debated and refuted.

Is flexing the spine all the time a good idea? Probably not. Is it ok to move the spine in different ways if there isn't a pathology or reason not to? YES. Are all spine movements good for all people? NO. Is it a good idea to hip hinge sometimes? Absolutely. Should I flex my spine to deadlift my grandchild? Probably not, although there is research that weighted spinal flexion is ok for some people and is not always correlated with disc damage and back pain. But I'm in favor of strengthening the back body and inviting glutes and hamstrings to the lifting party.

The other piece of this is load and adaptation- how heavy is the object you're picking up? Is your body adapted to doing the movement? How often are you doing the movement? Do you always pick up objects the same way?

Needless to say, I almost jumped out of my skin in this class, because this may then make students afraid to move their spine in the myriad of ways that are possible at any given time. This is what I think of as fear mongering at it's finest, and it happens in music and movement instruction.

This is especially better because my puppy, Milo, is looking photogenic.

Similarly, in yoga and other movement disciplines, there's often a lot of alignment cues that are absolutely meant to be helpful, but can also lead to the idea that there's one right way to do a pose, movement, or task. Let's take tree pose in yoga, or Vrksasana. I was taught to never put the bent knee sole of foot on the kneecap, and that the sole of foot had to be above or below. What's crazy is that students and teachers in training hear this, and instantly think something HORRIBLE is going to happen the minute someone's sole of foot comes up to their kneecap. Every movement depends on the context: the magnitude, the load, the frequency, the knee! I've seen many a group class where the teacher freaked out because a new student put their opposite sole of foot right on the opposite kneecap. This is perhaps not the best approach. (read Jules Mitchell's blog about the knee: hint, it's not just a hinge joint)

Fear mongering is well intentioned and comes from a place of wanting to help students, but it can lead to long term fears that are not helpful. On one hand, we have the dilemma of The Christmas Story Red Rifle gun, "You'll shoot your eye out," which not only doesn't deter Ralph but makes him think once he has one that he did shoot his eye out. On the other hand, there are students who fear every movement because someone has told them that x,y, and z are wrong with them and they can't do anything. Of course if someone has a pathology or injury, that's different, but if someone does not have an issue, how are we conveying information?

As a student in college, I was told by a music instructor to avoid any weight bearing work on my wrists, arms, and shoulders, and that I'd hurt myself. This made me

1) globally weak in my upper body

2) eventually injured from when I did anything

3) convinced I couldn't do anything because I "had weak wrists"

What's true in this situation? We need to gradually build strength and adaptation to load. Do you love yoga but not how it feels on your wrists? You need to build the range of motion and adaptation for that, rather than going once a week for constant wrist extension and then never doing those same movements during the day or week. As a person who now does lots of shoulder training and wrist extension work, it's about incremental progression. Just as we wouldn't expect to play a concerto at tempo in a week, we can't expect our bodies to do foreign movements suddenly without preparation.

The big takeaway for me is that our words as teachers matter immensely, and that when we set up movements as good or bad, our students will take our viewpoints and authority very seriously, almost too seriously. Part 2 to follow!